Fnatic Dylan: "Team Liquid is a much stronger team than they actually were able to show in this tournament so far. " - MSI Press conference Day 2

After all games were played at day 2 of MSI a press conference was held with the two teams participating in the last match of the day. While the whole team from Fnatic joined only Pobelter and Xmithie were present for the Team Liquid one.

Team Liquid

DrPuppet - You decided to play with Joey in the first game, first, how was it, how much were you able to prepare with him and how different was the shot calling process with him?

Pobelter - I think Joey did quite fine for the position he was put in. We did have a little bit of practice with him, we had a few games and a few scrims during the split. Clearly, we haven't practiced with him as much as we have with Olleh, but I think he did well for a Rookie showing up at MSI.

Travis - What do you guys think is going wrong, is North America, not a competitive Region this split, is there a fluke in Team Liquid, what is causing the loss?

Pobelter We just lost against Fnatic, so we didn't have the time to talk as a team and clearly figure out what is going on, we have a lot of different opinions. Sucks that we are pretty much shitting the bed, feels pretty bad. Why it is happening there could be a lot of reasons. There could be a mix of both thing that we are not playing to our level and also the teams here are pretty strong. Anyways we are here to do our best so even if it doesn't look like it we have and are practicing really hard for this event. So with the last three days of the group stage, we just want to focus on playing better than the first two.

Darius - Since you played with Olleh again against Fnatic, should we expect that you will keep playing with him or will you keep switching around? What is the situation for the next upcoming days and why are these changes being made.

Pobelter - I think this only a thing between the team and the coaching staff, so I don't think I can really give a comment on this.

DrPuppet - One of the things I noticed in the past four games is that Team Liquid drafted mostly scaling picks focusing on mid-game compositions. Is there any particular reason for it or is it mostly comfort picks?

Xmithie - I think it is a mix of both. We are very comfortable with what we have been practicing in scrims and at the same, we have a different meta compared to some other regions. So I guess we are still trying to figure out the meta day by day.

DrPuppet - Do you think this is one of the reasons holding team liquid back to succeed at MSI?

Xmithie - I guess this is also a mystery to us. I think we played really decent prior to this tournament, it might just be nerves or we are not being able to show it on stage.

Darius - What is your take on Yasuo, do you think he is going to be a highly contested pick in this tournament?

Pobelter - I think it is just a pick that synergises really well with Trundle because of the ult combo, it applies a lot of pressure and the gank could come off at any time and once the Yasuo is on you it is hard to get him off. Especially with ads being so strong that's kind of why Yasuo is so strong, so far only caps and I showed it off, but I've seen it a bit in scrims.

Fnatic

Darius - Congratulations first, how relieved are you after going 2:0 today after such a devastating day yesterday?

Hyllisang - Yes, yesterday was really disappointing, because we expected a different result, 1 loss at worst. So we grouped as a team and we spoke about it. We realized we need different picks and more comfort zone and it is really good to pick up the two wins, especially against Kingzone. We kind of expected it against NA so it feels really nice.

Dylan - Better Draft wins.

DrPuppet - So I want to ask about the draft situation, yesterday I spoke with Bwipo about it and he said a lot of the problems were in the draft phase and some players had some very difficult matchups to play. For example the Kai'sa into the Kog ma and even the swain on the top lane. So what is it about that playing siege compositions seem so effortless for you guys and what is it about Rekkles Sivir and Tristana.

Dylan - I think those sorts of setup, for example, having a tank top adds a lot of support for your carries. So it gives your carry a lot of room, a lot of space, tanks and there is a lot of cc. So they don't have to find plays themselves and it gives them a lot of room to do damage, to farm basically to carry the game.

DrPuppet - to Broxah - So I want to ask about the matchup against Kingzone, especially the matchup against. Everybody expected it wouldn't be so easy, but that level one invades changed it all around. As Peanut himself mentioned it was the reason the lost basically, so what was the thought process behind it and was it your call?

Broxah - So first that specific one was not mine actually, it was Caps. He had this Idea about 30 minutes before the game and we just started talking about this really during the drafting phase. We noticed it is really good and we actually can do this so basically just basically talked about this briefly before the match. So personally for me, it was really nice that Peanut locked in Zac because Peanut is so strong on Carrying champions like Olaf and Graves. So as soon as he locked in Zac and I had my Skarner I knew the game would go well for me, I was in a good spot.

Darius - How did you guys prepare to swing back for today?

Dylan - To be honest we have a very emotional team. I expected to be worse yesterday we were very sad after losing the first two games. After we reviewed and looked at the games we realized we could have won the first game and our drafts looked really bad. So we weren't as emotional and upset as I thought and we were just more focused on what we needed to do to win. That was surprising to me.

Parkes - Do you have a special technique to bounce back from such a bad day, that Na doesn't really have?

Dylan - I'm not really sure, Team Liquid is a much stronger team than they actually were able to show in this tournament so far. NA is not a worse region, there must be something going for them to be having a hard time. I also think we perform very well as a team when we have nothing left to lose and there is something about it when we have our backs against the walls like we saw it in worlds last year. These are the situations that are actually good for us.

Rekkles - I also thought that we played different styles than what we used to play during the whole split yesterday. So we had something to fall back in case it went wrong. So we could always rely on going back to the Tristana or Sivir and team fight compositions with good scaling. Meanwhile, for Liquid I'm not really sure they played their A game yesterday and they don't have anything else to try out and they would fall short. Compared to playing them on stage and playing them in scrims, they seemed very stressed out and I'm not really sure why. It was surprising to me actually to me, after scrimming the for about 20 to 30 games.

DrPuppet - We haven't seen Corki in while and you brought it out today against the Vladimir, Would you like to explain it?

Caps - Going into that match we had a couple of ideas in mind and a few cheesy picks prepared and wanted to try out, but we decided not to show them. So the draft stage became a little bit weird as we were prepared to playing one thing and were going to be playing another, then they banned four mids and blindly picked Sion, which isn't played that much. So it ended up in a weird situation. So I thought of something that would help us in team fights and was a snowball pick and I think it snowballed well because of the level one we did and if we had another level 1 it could have been a completely different story, but that's basically it.

DrPuppet - So it wasn't anything against the Sion itself?

Caps - Corki is really good against the Sion and also against Zac. You can use your W and use against his ult and Zac's E skill. Anything not mobile is countered by Sion since you would die pretty easily to Sion and the Zac. So there were definitely some picks I didn't want to pick and obviously because of the jump. I'm sad I didn't get to show off my Kai'sa